Out and about

Downtown Victoria Thursday had a strange vibe to it. I was waiting to be served in one store, and heard one guy rambling on about how much he hated the new US President-elect. How racist and misogynist Trump was, and how nuclear war was just around the corner. Seriously, this guy was absolutely frothing at the mouth. For half a second I thought he was going to take a pop at me, a total stranger, simply because I fall into the demographic profile of those being blamed for the Trump victory. Over fifty, male, Caucasian. Apparently to some we are the new Emmanuel Goldsteins.

So I applied the rule I learned long ago and looked away as if the meeting of hostile eyes was nothing, because there’s no more worthless activity than trying to have a reasonable discussion with anyone while their emotions are running that high. I mean I was pissed off with Trudeau getting elected Prime Minister, because his policies and the idiotic Carbon tax look like sending Canada’s economy even further into the tank, but then I’m not childish enough to go around looking for a fight just because things don’t go entirely my way. I’ll just keep my distance and make my own plans. Pick up, move on, adapt and if I have to, improvise.

Then I took a casual look at the CNN feed on one of the TV’s scattered about the place, and heard similar language coming from a talking head about what they thought Trump was going to be like. Talk about selective reporting.

Frankly what the pundits were saying didn’t gel with any of the speeches I’ve actually heard Trump making. The TV coverage was all opinions about opinions, half truths and projection, yet the guy I heard mouthing off in the store was taking this lamestream garbage as gospel. When Trump talked about dealing with the US immigration issues, and deporting the illegals, the talking heads were translating it as all immigrants, illegal or not. Which is a lie. When they talked about a worsening of international relations, Trump was talking about removing American interference and making other nations pay for their own military interventions. He most certainly wasn’t talking about shooting down Russian aircraft over Syria or actively promoting or engaging in ‘regime change’. Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadaffi may not have been people you’d like to invite to dinner, but they kept the lid on highly unstable areas.

These media folk have an agenda so obvious that it might as well be posted in letters ten feet high. Which is why they’ve been blowing their credibility faster than a thousand dollar call girl. The pieces of the jigsaw are all out there for anyone who cares to look. No wonder the Trump camp are calling these hacks ‘Presstitutes’. Lazy cut and paste Fark and Churnalism have been delivering nothing more than a sugar coated ball of poison via TV and news media. And it is poisonous, because you only have to look at the results. Anger at total strangers like me just because of their skin colour and age? And this is Canada for heavens sake!

Which begs the question, is the once trusted ‘profession’ of Journalism dead? The guys over at Rebel Media say that it may well be.

Me, I’ll go with my late father’s advice; “Don’t trust everything you read in the papers.”